Page 97 of Unscripted

Maybe I had.

“It’s new.” I turned to Harry and grabbed his arm. “Please, I need a ciggie.”

I must have looked as desperate as I felt because he begrudgingly let me go. “Not long, Poppy. I mean it, we need your confessional filmed asap.”

I hurried along to the side of the villa. I caught Callum’s eye on the way out. He nodded at me in understanding.

When I got to the smoking area, I couldn’t sit still. I had started shaking at some point and couldn’t stop.

I paced back and forth, my mind spinning in circles. My past wasn’t something I was ashamed of. I hadn’t even done anything wrong. I didn’t know what my ex was saying to the press or how he had weaseled his way from New York to London, but it wasn’t him I was worried about.

No, my biggest concern at the moment was Callum and how he would take the news. I hoped that it wouldn’t impact the way he felt about me; that he wouldn’t view me as damaged goods and change his mind about being together.

I didn’t have to wait long to find out. It had only been a few minutes, but Callum had managed to slip out and now here he was.

I stood there, simply staring at him. Wondering if everything was different.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I didn’t know how else to start.

He walked toward me then, coming to stand right in front of me, and cupped my face with his hands, tilting my head back.

And then he kissed me. It wasn’t intense or full of lust like our kisses had been all week. No, it was soft and gentle in a way I didn’t even realize I needed him to be. When he pulled back, he was smiling and the sight eased some of the tension in my gut.

“You have nothing to be sorry about. Your past is your past and if you’re okay with it, I’d like to know about it.”

I nodded at him and took a step back. Sitting down on the space’s small bench, I let out a breath and started talking.

“Gavin and I dated for five years. We met right out of college. Friends of friends of friends, that kind of thing. And it was easy and fun and exciting in all the ways a new relationship should be. But looking back now, the red flags were always there. He never took me on a real date; I was pretty much always second to his friends and what they were doing. But I loved him, so it was easy to ignore some of the not-so-great things. And we were living in New York, and I was working on paving my own career path, and I thought I was happy. I thought I was exactly where I was supposed to be, doing the things I was supposed to be doing. So when he got down on one knee and proposed last Christmas, I said ‘yes.’ I thought it was everything I had ever wanted.”

I took a deep breath and pressed on. At the very least, at the end, Callum would know the truth.

“It didn’t take very long for things to go off the rails after that. Maybe because I had a ring on my finger, he got comfortable. Or, well, even more comfortable. Maybe I just didn’t want to see it before.”

I took in another shaky gulp of air, steeling myself to confess the worst of it. The part that still made me sick. That kept me up at night.

“We—” I started and then stopped and then started again. “It was my idea. I said it first. We had been living together for so many years that I didn’t think twice about combining our bank accounts. I thought since we were engaged, we might as well do it. It was going to happen eventually, anyway.”

“Oh no,” Callum breathed out, catching on to where this was going.

I nodded and continued.

“At first, I noticed the balance dipping when it shouldn’t have been. But I thought, joint expenses are new to me. It’s normal. It’s fine. But it wasn’t fine. He . . . ”

Deep breath in and out. I was almost there.

“One morning I woke up, and I had this feeling. This sick feeling in my gut. Like my body already knew what had happened. I checked our account and there it was: a zero balance. It was all gone. All my money, every penny I had ever saved, like it never even existed. Even then I couldn’t believe it, couldn’t fathom that this was actually happening. I thought that it had to have been a mistake. Some kind of misunderstanding. So I walked into our kitchen, and he was sitting there, drinking a cup of coffee, looking like he didn’t have a care in the world. And I asked him about it.”

Another breath, in and out. I was nearly to the end.

“He laughed. Actually laughed and told me, ‘yes.' He had used that account. To buy himself a motorcycle. It was some special one, top of the line and it was going to be delivered the next day.”

“What a prick,” Callum said.

“The worst part is that when I told him that it was too much, that it was all my money, and the account was for us to use for our future, do you know what he said?”

Callum just shook his head.

“He told me, ‘You can always make more money.’ As though it was as simple as that. As though I had just told him we were out of milk or toilet paper. He didn’t see what was wrong with it, why what he did was such a breach of my trust.